O’ Donnels Island
The Tawnawully Project
Tawnawully (or Tawnawilly) is an area on the eastern shores of Lough Eske in County Donegal, Ireland. As one of my genealogy projects, I have traced someone’s great, great, great grandfather, Conal McGinty, back to Tawnawully. He survived two famines on a piece of very marginal land and lived to be 104 years old. Many of his descendants emigrated from Donegal to North America during the 1800s and early 1900s.
Today the area’s beauty disguises how difficult those times must have been in the past. I have met several of Conal’s descendants, including those living in America, researched their ancestors and taken them to see their ancestral homes.
I am currently engaged in a research project to help unlock the genealogy of Tawnawully and have compiled a number of databases which will hopefully assist others undertaking research in the area. If you have a story or a memory about Tawnawully, please contact me.
Four of Conal’s Great, Great Granddaughters with Lough Eske in the background
Research Ancestors Ireland Blog
